In a new analysis released Wednesday, economists and other experts at the Peterson Institute for International Economics tally the toll. Their work amounts to one of the most comprehensive assessments to date of the debt ceiling fights, from the measurable effect on short-term government debt to the intangible hit to the nation’s reputation overseas. (Many of the arguments could be disputed, and the authors take on most of those opposing views.)

The think tank’s president, Adam Posen, sums it up this way: “The bad behavior of Congress in repeatedly failing to pass budget legislation, or to bring the debt ceiling into line with spending, and ultimately explicitly threatening default on U.S. government debt, makes our fiscal politics no better than anyone else’s — and in some ways a lot worse,” he writes in the introduction. “There is no other known example of a solvent democracy flirting with default through sheer political stubbornness.”

Here are six effects as outlined in the report:

1. Heightened uncertainty about fiscal policy in recent years depressed economic output by one percentage point, or about $150 billion a year, partly by raising private-sector borrowing costs.

“To be sure, some of the cause and effect of this relationship could run in the reverse direction, in the sense that poor economic performance could lead to greater uncertainty about fiscal responses,” writes David Stockton. “Other recent factors, such as the euro crisis, could also have contributed to lagging performance. But most of the evidence supports the proposition that fiscal policy uncertainty has affected financial conditions and economic performance. … Damage done by manufactured fiscal crises has been slow and not always visible, accumulating over time.”

2. Damaging Americans’ confidence carries consequences for their behavior in the short run and long run.

U.S. households may “interpret the political brinkmanship and conflict surrounding debt ceiling negotiations as increasing the likelihood of a severe but highly uncertain negative shock to their finances, which might impact their spending and saving behavior in different ways,” writes Tomas Hellebrandt. “For most households, for example, the main motivation for saving and accumulating wealth is to smooth consumption over the life cycle—to provide for retirement and to create a buffer of resources available during periods of unemployment or low income. The greater the uncertainty about future income and employment prospects, the more likely households are to save for precautionary purposes.”

3. Investors have learned to look beyond immediate risks, but they’re not ignoring the risks.

“While it is hard to tell from market behavior, these fiscal games erode, little by little, the credibility—and thus the intrinsic value—of U.S. treasuries and the U.S. dollar,” writes Ángel Ubide. He runs through the market reactions in 2011 and 2013. Among them: “Some changes in the plumbing of the financial system were influential. There were reports that counterparties and clearing houses were apparently refusing to accept treasury bills maturing in late October and early November as collateral, an indication of the default risk being taken seriously. Some institutions demanded discounts, or haircuts, on these bills, and apparently there were moves to rewrite legal documentation that would enable writing down of the collateral values of U.S. treasuries.”

4. The legal uncertainty alone can disrupt markets and damage the economy.

“U.S. government debt looks different to economists, capital market investors, bank regulators, and contract and constitutional lawyers,” writes Anna Gelpern. “It is a funding vehicle for the federal government, a store of value and liquidity for investors around the world, a benchmark for pricing other assets, a contract, and a constitutional battleground. Policy suffers when these different perspectives fail to engage with one another.

“Once the Treasury’s cash management schemes are exhausted, the president runs out of legal options. The remaining options—all illegal—comprise a political nonstarter (unilaterally raising taxes), economic disruption (withholding spending), and a financial market shock (unauthorized debt issuance). The extent of economic disruption would depend on the amount and kind of spending withheld. The extent of financial market disruption would depend on market reception of the unauthorized treasuries and the resulting two-tier treasury market. Lawsuits will come no matter what, in time to clarify policy choices for the crisis after next.”

5. Even a partial default on U.S. debt would reverberate through the global economy and damage the dollar’s standing.

“The continued stability of the dollar’s reserve-currency status reflects the widespread conviction that outright default, or even a significant delay in payment, will not be part of any resolution of the ongoing debt debate in the United States,” write Joseph E. Gagnon and Kent Troutman. “The strength of this conviction is evident in the lack of any increase in yields on U.S. Treasury securities with remaining maturities greater than a few weeks, even during pivotal moments of the debt ceiling debate.

“That said, if foreign governments were to become seriously concerned that the U.S. Treasury might default on some or all of its obligations, there would surely be a rush to exchange dollar reserves for other currencies. This would cause a crash in the value of the dollar, which by itself would greatly shrink the dollar’s share of foreign exchange reserves in value terms. Whether the dollar’s share would decline by more than the decline in its exchange value depends on whether foreign governments would be more or less determined to sell dollar assets than other investors. Because every transaction must have a buyer and a seller, foreign governments could succeed in selling off dollar reserves only to the extent that other investors were willing to buy more dollar assets.”

6. The threat of default finally could encourage investors to pursue other options.

“Repeatedly playing political brinksmanship in the United States and assuming the world’s investors will accept ‘there is no alternative’ to accepting U.S. dysfunction poses an increasing risk,” writes Douglas Rediker. “The ability to revert to ‘business as usual’ for the United States following repeated self-inflicted brushes with default will inevitably diminish as other sources, destinations, and intermediaries for capital continue to develop as alternatives. Unlikely though it may seem, repeated bad political and fiscal behavior on the part of the United States might result in an acceleration of the development of alternatives around the world. Some of the main beneficiaries may well be emerging markets.

“Potential shifts in international investor sentiment and behavior are not trivial to the United States. Non-U.S. investors own roughly $25 trillion in U.S. dollar assets and the dollar dominates global foreign exchange markets, with roughly 87 percent of all foreign exchange transactions involving the dollar.”

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